Act II, Scene 5

[The courtroom.  Louis is giving his closing argument.]

Louis:      And finally, the prosecution has failed to prove that my client, the Honorable George W. Bush, has in any way violated the precepts of societal husbandry.  His people look to him for security and prosperity.  And he delivers to them the fruits of his wisdom.  He does the best he can.  The best he is allowed to do by the strictures and limitations of history and civilization and countless telephone polls.  He does what can be done at his point in time, given the limitations of his power and his society's reluctance to surrender total accountability. 

As long as the common people believe they are still in charge of their own lives, there is little more he can do.  For isn't it only when you have totally surrendered yourself to the divine will of your betters that you are totally free.  Free to live your life without the anxiety of making the wrong decision.  Free of the fear that your actions will harm someone else.  Or that you yourself will be needlessly harmed.  That the sacrifices you make will be appreciated and will benefit the society as a whole, as represented by its leaders, those who lift your burdens from your shoulders and place them on their own.

This is the only question we have to consider today.  History seeks to judge a man for what he has done, and what he has said he has done, and what others have said he has done.  This is history's great ponder.  Who is this man?  What are his works?  And why should we care?

This man has a great many political enemies.  They seek to destroy him and besmirch his name.  They pelt him with laughter as villagers might stone their idiot with offal.  They accuse him of being maddened by his god.  Drunk with his own power.  Intoxicated with war.  Inebriated with delusions of grandeur and infallibility.  And at the same time, nothing more than a jackass who has difficulty completing a complex sentence.

But what great leader is not beset by foes?  Are not the greatest leaders forced to vanquish the most fearsome villains?  Would Abraham Lincoln have been a great president if the nation had not divided against him?  Would Napoleon be remembered today if Wellington and the whole of Europe had not stood against him?  Would we still speak of Alexander the Great, or Caesar Augustus, or William the Conqueror if they had not triumphed against great odds and swept aside the blunt objections of nations arrayed against them?  Would America today be the beacon of prosperity and the prophet of freedom it is, if it had not first swept aside moral objections and made the North American continent safe for the white man to realize his promised land?

Rank has its privileges.  But rule has its obligations.  It is not just the sword of Damocles that lies over the head of the ruler.  It is the judgment of history, nay, the judgment of God!  Those who rule, rule in the sight of God.  They see with eyes that watch everything, not just the petty concerns of one man or another.  They must see everything.  Weigh everything.  Decide which lives to save.  And which lives to break asunder.  It is not an easy life.  It is not something everyman can do.  We who rule, rule not because we can.  We rule because we must.

[Louis sits]

George:     That was beautiful.  It brought a tear to my eye.

Louis:      In my day rulers needed not justify their actions.

George:     Still, you were very eloquent and convincing.

Alecto:     The prosecution calls Sergeant Jimmy Mack Conners.

George:     I thought you just gave your closing argument. Can she call another witness now?

Louis:      The court of history is an endless process. There is always room for another revisionist view.

[Conners enters and sits in the witness stand.  Tisiphone rises to interrogate the witness.]

Tisiphone:  Your name?

Conners:    Sergeant Jimmy Mack Conners, mam.

Tisiphone:  What do you do, Jimmy?

Conners:    I am gunner on an M1 Abrams.

Tisiphone:  That's an armored tank, right?

Conners:    Yes, sir, mam.  The best battle tank in the whole world.

Tisiphone:  You're proud of your tank.

Conners:    Damn straight.  It can do forty, thirty cross country, hit a target the size of an oil drum at 4000 meters, and never even slow down.  The Iraqis in Desert Storm never even got us sighted before their tanks were blown out from underneath them.  Must be why they mostly bugged out after we crossed the border during Iraqi Freedom.

Tisiphone:  What's a gunner do?

Conners:    It's my job to point and click the one twenty.

Tisiphone:  One twenty?

Conners:    120 millimeter smooth bore cannon.  It's the main gun of the M1 Abrams.  Big fucker.  Built in Germany.  Only tank that can stand up to it is the Abrams herself.

Tisiphone:  I see.  So you are the one that aims the weapon and pulls the trigger?

Conners:    Yes, mam.

Tisiphone:  You're not the only crewmember on your tank?

Conners:    No, mam.  The M1 Abrams is designed for a four person crew.  The commander - that would be Lieutenant Washington, mam - oversees the rest of the crew, directs the tank's operations and communicates with the other commanders in the company.  The driver - Sergeant Matthews - steers the tank and the loader - Corporal Rodriguez - loads the one twenty with either sabot or heat rounds, depending on what type of target the commander tells me to shoot at.

Tisiphone:  You decide which type of ammunition to use?

Conners:    Yes, mam.  We use the sabot rounds mainly against other tanks.  The heats are for the softer targets.

Tisiphone:  Softer targets?

Conners:    Personnel carriers.  Trucks.  Buildings.  Things that aren't armored. 

Tisiphone:  People.

Conners:    Yes, mam.

Tisiphone:  Where were you on the morning of March 31, 2003?

Conners:    Our company was looking to push on Najaf, mam.  It was a major Shiite holy city and the brass had figured to bypass it on the way to Baghdad.  But some Wahhabis, what they called Fedayeen, were using the city as a base for hit and run attacks on our positions. 

Tisiphone:  So your brass, they decided to attack the city?

Conners:    Yes, mam.  We couldn't afford to leave troops behind to isolate the city and we couldn't afford to let them attack our supply lines at will.

Tisiphone:  What were you looking forward to?

Conners:    It was going to be a turkey shoot, mam.  Like playing a video game.  Anytime they threw anything up, our spotters would pinpoint the location and we, or the air jocks, would take it out.  Even if the spotters didn't see the original fire, we had computers that could backtrack the trajectory and give us a good idea where the enemy was.  Then we just blanket the target with heat.  Taking Najaf was no problem.  We owned Iraq.

George:     Now.  This is more like it!  That's one of my boys up there.

Louis:      You know this man?

George:     Why sure, he's one of my soldiers.  He went into Iraq and kicked ass.  Give them hell, skinny!  (Substitute an Bushian nickname based on the physical attributes of the actor: skinny, blondie, stilts, whatever)

Louis:      So it is a good thing that he is talking about killing women and children?

George:     What?  What are you talkin' about?

Conners:    They kept coming down the road.  We fired a warning shot right next to the truck.  They swerved a bit and rocked, but righted themselves and kept coming.  Two days earlier a car bomb had killed four G.I.s at a checkpoint.  One of the soldiers had opened the trunk of a taxi and it blew him and the car fifteen feet into the air.  You can pack a lot of explosives into a truck.  There was infantry all around us and APVs.  It wasn't like I had a choice.

Tisiphone:  It was a battle zone?

Conners:    It wasn't just a battle zone.  It was a fucking fire fight.  There were Wahhabis firing at us from behind a crumbled building and there were tracers winging through the air all over the damn place.  That truck must have been hit a dozen times by small arms fire.  Anybody else would have bugged out, but those crazy hajjis, they just kept coming.

Tisiphone:  So you fired.

Conners:    One heat.  Right into the engine block.

Tisiphone:  And that stopped the truck?

Conners:    Damn straight.  And everything in it.  The truck was full of chickens.  Do you believe that?  The bed of the truck was full of chickens in wooden crates.  After it went up it must of rained chicken feathers for half an hour.  It was a snow storm in the middle of the desert.  It was as hot as hell and it was snowing chicken feathers.  The rest of the guys started taking to calling me the chicken god.

Tisiphone:  What about the people in the truck?

Conners:    Yeah.  There were people in the truck.

Tisiphone:  They died?

Conners:    Yes, mam.  They all died.  The guy driving the truck.  And the two women in the cab with him.  And the little girl.

Tisiphone:  Did you see their bodies?

Conners:    Yeah.  A Major came down the road and argued with my Lieutenant.  Somebody got the bright idea that we should search the wreckage for evidence of explosives.  We searched.  I saw what was left.

Tisiphone:  Just pieces, right?

Conners:    Yes, mam.  They all were in pieces.  Well.  I guess it would be more correct to say there were just a few pieces.  An arm.  A leg.  A torso without a head.  A little girl without a face.

George:     Oh, shit.  This can't be good.

Louis:      What is wrong?

George:     Well, listen to this.  A little girl with her face blown off.  People in pieces.  A jury hears stuff like this, and they can't wait to vote guilty.

Louis:      It is history were talking about here.  It does not remember crass little details.  Only important things matter.  When cities fall.  Who ends up in power.  Dates and names.  That is all anyone remembers.

George:     Then why do we have to listen to all this?

Louis:      The fault lies with the Furies.

[The Furies hiss.]

Louis:      They thrive on this.  Makes them feel important.  It is like your...  daytime talk shows.  You know.  My brother's gay lover is sleeping with my father and I want him back.  That is all this really is.

George:     Are you sure?  It sounds like damning stuff, even if it's not really my fault.

Louis:      Trust me.  I was in power a lot longer than you.  This kind of thing just fades away.

Tisiphone:  What was it like to go home?

Conners:    Strange.  I mean it was home.  I recognized the place.  But it didn't feel right.

Tisiphone:  What didn't feel right about it?

Conners:    I guess it was the people.  I didn't feel connected to them anymore.  They'd ask me about the war, but they didn't really want to hear what it was like.  They wanted to hear that I was a hero.  That I did the right thing.  That everything was alright.

Tisiphone:  Was everything alright?

Conners:    No. Things weren't right.  I couldn't talk to them about the war.  How can you talk to them?  They don't understand what it is like to kill someone.  Even when you're right, you still killed someone.  They ask you what it was like.  They want to hear that you did them proud.  They are always bragging about you.

My buddies, ah, some of them anyway.  They talked like it was one of our video games.  Point and click and, poof, you move on to the next kill.  But the bodies don't just disappear like they do in the games.  They fall down.  They jerk and twitch.  They smell.  The flies come.  They don't have that in video games.  The part that comes after you've killed someone.  The messy part.

Tisiphone:  What did you do?

Conners:    I went back to the unit.  Back to the team.  We didn't do anything really.  Nothing more than I would have done at home.  Played video games.  Watched DVDs.  Talked about girls.  But nobody asked questions.  I didn't have to answer for anything.  I don't need to.  We'd already been there, together.